take effect on February 28. On account of advancing years, Mr. Mailliard felt that the active administrative duties of the department should be placed in younger hands and that he would like to be able to devote more of his time to investigation and study of the birds and mammals of western America. As a recognition of his long and valuable services to the academy the council elected Mr. Mailliard curator emeritus of the department.

DR. A. C. NOE, associate professor of paleobotany in the University of Chicago, was elected chairman for the Chicago area of the Western Society of Engineers at its recent meeting in Chicago.

PROFESSOR MARSTON T. BOGERT, of the department of chemistry, Columbia University, has been appointed by the National Research Council a member of its central petroleum committee.

SIR GILBERT WALKER was reelected president of the Royal Meteorological Society at the annual meeting held on January 19.

DR. F. W. LINDHOLM has been appointed as successor to Professor C. Dorno to the directorship of the Physical-Meteorological Institute at Davos, Switzerland.

BEVERLY L. CLARKE has resigned his National Research Fellowship at Stanford University and is now research chemist with the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., New York.

PROFESSOR KARL T. COMPTON, who has been on sabbatical leave from the physics department of Princeton University, has returned and resumes his work at the opening of the second term. Professor Compton has recently lectured at the Universities of Göttingen, London, Bristol and Cambridge on "Recent Researches in the Field of Ionized Gases."

PROFESSOR W. D. CAIRNS, Secretary-treasurer of the Mathematical Association, is spending the year in California, on leave of absence from Oberlin College. He will be at Berkeley until early in May and then at the University of California at Los Angeles until early in August. The association business is being carried on by the assistant secretary, Professor C. H. Yeaton, at Oberlin College.

AMONG those who have been granted leave of absence for the second term at Cornell University are Professor Alvin C. Beal, who will spend several months in Europe in informal study of botanical gardens, parks and landscape gardening. Professor Samuel N. Spring will sail to observe forest conditions in Italy, France and Germany. Professor Eugene D. Montillon will study landscape architecture in France, Italy and England.

DR. M. J. ZIGLER, assistant professor of psy.logy at Wellesley College, will teach at the University of California, Southern branch, in the summer session of 1927.

DR. H. G. MCMILLAN, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, located at the field station at Greeley, Colorado, is now at the Boyce Thompson Institute and will study the effect of ultra-violet light on potato plants and on the symptoms of diseased potato plants.

PROFESSOR WILLIAM E. HOFFMANN, head of the biology department of Lingnan University, Canton, China, represented the university and South China at the third Pan-Pacific Science Congress recently held in Tokyo, where he gave papers on entomology and parasitology.

M. GEORGES CLAUDE, of Paris, member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, gave a lecture under the auspices of the schools of mines, engineering and chemistry of Columbia University on January 11 entitled "Scientific and Industrial Researches."

DR. ABRAM T. JOFFE, director of the Röntgen laboratory and professor of physics in the Polytechnical Institute at Leningrad, spoke on the evenings of January 26, 27 and 28 before the physics department of the University of Pittsburgh and the Physical Society of Pittsburgh on "The Physical Deformation of Crystals," "The Passage of Electric Currents through Dielectrics" and "The Breakdown of Dielectrics."

BENJAMIN H. HUNNICUTT, dean of Escola Agricola de Lavras, Brazil, will give lectures in American agricultural schools and colleges from January through June on agricultural education in Brazil and general agricultural conditions in that country.

DR. ARTHUR HAAS, professor of physics at the University of Vienna, will speak before the Philosophical Society of Washington on February 17 on "The Atom as a Source of Energy."

PROFESSOR HENRI FREDERICQ, director of the institute of physiology at the University of Liége, Belgium, gave a series of lectures at the University of California on February 14, 15 and 16.

THE seventh postgraduate lecture of the faculty of medicine of Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, was delivered on February 4 by Professor C. C. Macklin, of the University of Western Ontario, London, on "Modern Views on the Structure and Function of the Bronchial Tree."

DR. GEORGE GRANT MACCURDY, of Yale University, completed on February 4 a lecture tour of four weeks. He spoke twice at the University of Illinois, twice for the Davenport Public Museum, and once each for the Surgical Club of Omaha, the University of Iowa, the University of Michigan, the Toledo Art

Museum, the University of Buffalo and the Academy of Sciences of Warren, Pa. Dr. MacCurdy's lectures were on prehistoric archeology and dealt largely with the latest discoveries as well as with the work of the American School of Prehistoric Research, of which he is director.

DR. H. B. WILLIAMS, professor of physiology in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, will lecture at the Franklin Institute on February 24, on "Physical Instruments in Medical Service."

DR. LELAND O. HOWARD, chief of the U. S. Bureau of Entomology, spoke at Cornell University on January 27, on "Fifty Years of Economic Entomology." DR. MARTIN H. FISCHER, professor of physiology at the University of Cincinnati, presented the annual N. W. Jones lectures under the auspices of the University of Oregon Medical School on January 12 and 13. Dr. Fischer's subject was "The Constitution of Living Matter and Its Significance in Some Problems of Physiology, Pathology and Medicine."

DR. KNIGHT DUNLAP, professor of psychology at the Johns Hopkins University, will deliver two lectures before the faculty and student body of West Virginia University on February 18.

DR. F. W. O'CONNOR, of the division of Medical Education, Rockefeller Foundation, gave a lecture on "Filariasis" on February 4, at the Harvard Medical School.

DR. A. V. KIDDER, chairman of the division of anthropology and psychology, National Research Council, is to address a joint meeting of the Anthropological Society of Washington and the Washington Academy of Sciences in the Cosmos Club, on February 24. His subject will be "Prehistoric Cliff

dwellers of Arizona and their Predecessors."

ON November 26 a memorial window to John Tradescant, the younger, was unveiled in the Ashmolean Museum of the University of Oxford. This museum, said to be the oldest in the Anglo-Saxon world, and based largely on the collections of the two John Tradescants, father and son, came to the university as a gift from Elias Ashmole, friend and heir of the Tradescants. The new memorial window in Oxford is the gift of the garden clubs of Virginia. MISS CAROLINE L. HUNT, member of the scientific staff of the U. S. Bureau of Home Economics, died on January 27.

W. M. CHAUVENET, British consulting chemist and mining engineer, known for his work on the chemistry of ores and structural and mining geology, has died, aged seventy-one years.

DR. KARL HELL, emeritus professor of general chemistry at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, died on December 11, aged seventy-seven years.

A BILL aimed at abolishing the teaching of the theory of evolution in the public schools of New Hampshire has been rejected, the committee on education of the House of Representatives voting that it was "inexpedient to legislate on the question."

REPRESENTATIVE L. O. RICHARDSON, of Adams County, introduced in the North Dakota House on February 5 a bill to bar from the schools any doctrine that teaches that man is of other than direct divine origin. Violation of the act would be termed a misdemeanor. It would provide a fine of not less than $25 or more than $100 for each offense.

THE Rotenberry anti-evolution bill, which would prohibit the teaching of evolution in tax-supported schools of Arkansas, has been rejected by the State Legislature. The senate voted on February 10 to table the bill, which was passed by the house at a session the day before.

THE Vienna Zentralanstalt for Meteorology and Geophysics, which was founded in 1851 at the instance of the Vienna Academy of Sciences, has reached its seventy-fifth anniversary. At the suggestion of the director, the late Dr. F. M. Exner, the academy celebrated the event by issuing a Festschrift dedicated to the institute; the volume, of about 200 pages, contains thirteen papers by Austrian and German geophysicists.

THE centenary of the birth of Lord Lister falls on April 5, 1927, and a committee has been formed to organize a celebration in London. At the suggestion of the Royal College of Physicians of London, the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the Royal Society of Medicine, the initiative was taken by the Royal Society, which is acting as a coordinating center. The celebrations will take place on Wednesday and Thursday, April 6 and 7. They will include a reception of delegates and the delivery of short addresses by some of them, a commemorative service in Westminster Abbey, a reception at the Royal College of Surgeons, a conversazione at the house of the Royal Society, a dinner with the Merchant Taylors Company in its hall and the delivery of discourses on Lister as physiologist, pathologist and surgeon.

THE University of Louvain, Belgium, will celebrate its five hundredth anniversary with formal ceremonies on June 28 and 29. Invitations have been received by officials of American universities and academies to take part and it is probable that delegations will be sent from several schools in the United States and Canada.

AN additional $155,500 for the U. S. Bureau of Mines would be included in the second deficiency appropriation bill under an amendment by Senator Oddie, of Nevada. The sum would be distributed as follows: Mineral mining investigation, $25,000; economies of the mineral industry, $40,000; operation of mine rescue cars and stations, $55,500, and investigation of mine accidents, $35,000.

UNDER a bill introduced on February 4 by Senator Neely, of West Virginia, a reward of $5,000,000 for the first person to discover a real cure for cancer would be paid by the federal government.

PROVISION for cooperation by the Smithsonian Institution with state, educational and scientific organizations in the United States for continuing ethnological researches among the American Indians, and the preservation of archeological remains, would be made in a bill introduced in the House of Representatives by Mr. Byrns, of Tennessee. The bill would authorize an appropriation of $20,000, to be expended for this purpose.

CANCELLATION of the assessment of duty on certain scientific apparatus imported by the Smithsonian Institution, amounting to $658.75, and the admittance of all further importations duty free would be authorized in a bill (House Bill No. 16737) introduced by Representative Newton, of Minneapolis, Minn.

DR. G. A. TALBERT, head of the department of physiology in the medical school of the University of North Dakota, has been given a grant of $300 for the extending of his research on the simultaneous study of the constituents that are common to the sweat, urine and the blood. The fund was appropriated by the American Medical Association for scientific research.

DR. R. A. F. PENROSE, JR., has given $500 for the support of the Journal of Geology, thus enabling the continuation of the improvements which were inaugurated by former gifts of Dr. Penrose.

A FOUNDATION for scientific research in mental hygiene and the treatment of problems of delinquency and criminology is provided for in the will of the late Dr. William F. Becker, of Milwaukee, which was filed in probate court. The estate is valued at $100,000.

THE London Hospital has received from Mr. Bernhard Baron, British tobacco manufacturer, a gift of £25,000 for the endowment of the Pathological Institute bearing his name, towards the cost of which he has already given £10,000.

DR. WM. SCHAUS, honorary assistant curator, division of insects, of the U. S. National Museum, has

recently purchased and donated to the museum a collection of moths from Bolivia containing about 10,000 specimens. This is a large and important addition to the collection of South American moths, which is believed to be the largest in the world.

MRS. ROBERT W. WILLSON has sent to the Harvard College Library, in fulfillment of Professor Willson's wishes, 130 of the rarer volumes from his collection of works on astronomy.

INITIAL arrangements are being made for the repair of the Carnegie during 1927 in accordance with the appropriation made by the board of trustees of the Carnegie Institution of Washington on December 10, 1926, for the rehabilitation of that vessel, which must precede the three-years' cruise to begin in 1928.

THE will of the late Dr. Hamilton F. Biggar, Cleveland, includes a gift of $100,000 to the Cleveland Foundation, three fourths of the income from which is to be used for advancing the science of medicine and $5,000 to the Cleveland Medical Library Association.

THE Altman Foundation has donated $10,000 for the general work of the New York Academy of Medicine; an anonymous donor has promised a gift of $10,000 a year for five years, and a third $10,000 has been promised provided $300,000 for library endowment is raised before July 1.

CONTRACTS have been signed for the immediate construction of an agricultural engineering building at the Davis branch of the College of Agriculture of the University of California. The total cost is to be approximately $140,000, of which $125,000 was specifically provided for at the last legislature.

THE State Department of Conservation of Massachusetts has announced that Miss Susan Minns, of Boston, has made a gift to the Commonwealth of a tract known as Little Wachusett Mountain, Princeton, containing 127 acres, to be a wild life sanctuary for

ever.

The gift was accepted by Governor Fuller and the executive council at their meeting on January 19. A GIFT of £74,000 to Edinburgh University has been made by the International Education Board. This gift will be applied as a contribution to the cost of a new department of zoology, which is to be created at the King's buildings of the university, in the Craigsmillar district of the city. Of the total sum £30,000 is for the buildings, £10,000 for the equipment and £26,000 for endowment.

A DONOR who desires to remain anonymous has offered the University of London the sum of £10,000 towards the establishment of a chair of dietetics. Subject to certain conditions, the offer of Mr. J. G.

Wilson to present to the university a 24-inch reflector telescope has been accepted. Lady Godlee is giving a sum of money, to be held in trust for University College and University College Hospital Medical School, to found a Rickman Godlee Lectureship in memory of her husband, the late Sir Rickman J. Godlee. The managing director of the Vultex Products, Ltd., is to give a sum of money for three years for lectures on colloidal chemistry.

ACCORDING to the United States Daily the establishment of a national institute of health is proposed in a bill introduced in congress by Representative Kindred, of Astoria, New York. The measure would also

authorize increased appropriations for the Hygienic Laboratory and proposes that the government accept donations for use in ascertaining the cause, prevention and cure of disease affecting human beings. An appropriation of $1,000,000 is asked to establish the proposed institute and $200,000 a year for five years to construct new and enlarged quarters for the Hygienic Laboratory.

PRELIMINARY sketches for the new six-story building for the U. S. Department of Agriculture have been submitted to Assistant Secretary R. W. Dunlap by the treasury department, according to the U. S. Daily. The building will be erected on the square between B and C Streets, and Thirteenth Street and Linworth Place, southwest, in Washington, D. C., at an estimated cost of $650,000 for the site, and $2,500,000 for the construction work. Two years will be required to complete the structure. During the first year, the entire ground floor will be completed at a cost of $550,000. During the second year the remaining floors will be erected. The total floor space will be 350,000 square feet.

THE American Society of Civil Engineers has awarded its Croes medal to Clarence S. Jarvis, of the United States Bureau of Public Roads; the Thomas Fitch Rowland prize to Nicholas S. Hill, Jr., consulting engineer of New York City; the James Laurie prize to Lewis A. Perry, construction engineer of the Longview Company, Longview, Wash.; the Arthur M. Wellington prize to Col. Charles W. Kutz, of the Corps of Engineers, United States Army, and the Collingwood prize for juniors to Cecil Vivian von Abo, of Johannesburgh, South Africa, chief civil engineer of the South African railways and harbors. These awards were for papers on technical subjects contributed to the society.

FROM a loan fund of £10,000,000 available for the development of the British East African colonies and dependencies, the use of £4,000 has been recommended by an allotment committee for the Amani Institute for Agricultural Research, according to the Experiment Station Record. It is expected that this insti

GIFTS have been announced of $10,000 from Miss Helen Rand and $5,000 from the Jackson Johnson Shoe Company to Vanderbilt University.

To meet the growing demands of the free classes in engineering, Cooper Union, New York City, is installing equipment costing $40,000. Additions to the hydraulic laboratory aggregate $10,000, and when completed the present capacity will be doubled at a total outlay of $25,000. Similar enlargements of the mechanical engineering laboratories are planned.

PROFESSOR O. H. RECHARD has been made head of the department of mathematics at the University of Wyoming.

DR. C. M. MACKALL has been promoted to be head of the department of chemistry at George Washington University.

DR. O. C. MAGISTAD, soil chemist for the United Fruit Company, stationed at Tela, Honduras, has been appointed associate professor of agricultural chemistry in the University of Arizona and associate chemist in the Experiment Station.

DR. IRA L. BALDWIN has been appointed to the staff of the department of agricultural bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin.

MISS OLGA H. M. GLOY, who for the past two years has held a traveling fellowship from the International Education Board, has completed her work for the Ph.D. degree in the department of chemistry, Columbia University, and has been appointed lecturer in chemistry and nutrition in the University of Otago, New Zealand.

A. G. TANSLEY, lecturer in botany in the University of Cambridge, has been appointed to succeed Sir Frederick Keeble as Sherardian professor of botany at the University of Oxford.

PROFESSOR P. KOEBE, of the University of Jena, has been appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Leipzig.

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE BABYLONIAN DISCOVERY OF THE PRECES

SION OF THE EQUINOXES

RECENTLY it has been shown1 that the slow motion of the equinoctial points on the ecliptic, called the precession of the equinoxes, was first discovered before the time of Hipparchus, by a Babylonian astronomer Kidinnu (sometimes written Kidenas or Cidenas), who directed an astronomical school at Sippra, on the Euphrates, about 343 B. C. This Babylonian achievement had been suspected for some years, but no definite conclusion had been reached, because of uncertainties relating to the interpretation of astronomical records.2 The final settlement of this question has become possible by the examination of some new Babylonian tables.

The fact that the astronomer Naburiannu (about 508 B. C.) fixed the equinoctial point at 10°, and Kidinnu, about a century and a half later, at 8°, the zero point on the ecliptic being interpreted as the same in both cases, shows that Kidinnu had a knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes. A study of tables indicates that from that time on, in the ephemerides following the system of Kidinnu, the zero point on the ecliptic was shifted from time to time, to enable astronomers to retain the same angular value for the beginning of the autumnal equinoctial years. This again implies a knowledge of precession. A table (VAT 7821) prepared not later than 186 B. C., and based on the Kidinnu system, gives solar longitudes from day to day, differing by 59'9", an amount in excess of the true average value of 59'8'9''.6 for a sidereal year, which was estimated by Kidinnu to be 36546h13m43. This excess was corrected in the table by taking on a certain day 56′9′′ in place of 59'9". Thus the computer of the table took the average daily velocity of 59'9" to yield in the course of one year, not exactly 360°, but an additional 3'. Dividing 360°3′ by 59′9′′, and allowing liberally for certain possible sources of error, Schnabel concludes that the year considered by the computer could not have exceeded 365d5h30m. The modern value for the equinoctial solar year is 365°5h48m45s. Thus the Kidinnu astronomy had two years, the sidereal and the equinoctial. Kidinnu deserves to be ranked among the greatest astronomers of ancient times.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

FLORIAN CAJORI

1 Paul Schnabel, “Kidenas, Hipparch und die Entdeckung der Präzession," Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, N.S., Vol. 3, April, 1926, p. 1-60.

2 F. X. Kugler, "Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel," II Buch, II Teil, 2 Heft, 1924, Anhang II.

PUBLICATION BY PHOTOGRAPHY

IN connection with Professor Albrecht's article in SCIENCE for December 31, 1926, on "Publication by Photographic Reproduction of Typewriting," it should be noted that the Coast and Geodetic Survey has been using a similar method for some of its publications since 1923.

Attention was called to the possibility of using such a method by a publication of the Topographic Surveys Branch of the Department of the Interior of Canada, "Magnetic Observations in Western Canada," which appeared in 1921. In it the tabular matter, about 270 pages, was all reproduced photographically from typewritten sheets.

The advantages of such a method were recognized at once, not only the great saving in cost, but also the elimination of the tedious operation of proofreading a mass of figures and the inherent danger of errors being overlooked even by experienced readers, and steps were taken to make use of it where possible. The publications giving the results of observations at the magnetic observatories of the bureau consist largely of tables of uniform size and are, therefore, well adapted to photographic reproduction, and the method was given its first trial with them.

means.

The principal tables give for each hour of each day of the year the values of declination, horizontal intensity and vertical intensity, as well as daily maximum and minimum values and daily and monthly These quantities are tabulated by months on suitable forms by means of a specially designed cross tabulating machine, the tabulation being made as the quantities are computed. A carbon copy is made at the same time, and this serves as the copy for photographic reproduction, after such changes have been made as result from the revision of the computation. With care in using fresh carbon paper there is no difficulty in securing a good reproduction even when the reduction in size is considerable.

The method is being used successfully in the publication of the quarterly Seismological Reports of the bureau, the issue of which began in 1926. In this case the copy for reproduction is prepared by typewriter, either with or without carbon paper backing. D. L. HAZARD

COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY,
WASHINGTON, D. C.

REFERRING to the letter by Dr. Albrecht regarding the advantages of photographic reproduction in publishing, I should like to add my testimony to the excellence of the method for all uses, but especially for tabular matter. The American Jersey Cattle Club has for several years been publishing its tables of production by the animals of the breed it records by this method, and the results are really not inferior to